The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus of a tool holder in which a working tool such as drill, cutter, or the like is attached to the tool holder and this tool holder itself has information and, more particularly, to an information processing apparatus of a tool holder in which the tool holder itself has the information regarding the automatic tool exchange control such that an arbitrary tool is selected from a number of tools attached to the tool holder and the selected tool is attached to or detached from a machine tool in accordance with the working sequence by the program control.
Hitherto, in the machine tools such as machining centers and the like, tools are exchanged by the automatic tool exchanging apparatus.
FIG. 1 shows an example of a machining center having an automatic tool exchanging apparatus. An automatic tool exchanging apparatus 10 has a rotatable belt mechanism 12. A number of racks 14 to enclose tools are provided for the belt mechanism 12. For example, as shown in FIG. 2, a holder (standard article) 18 to which a working tool 16 such a drill or the like is attached is inserted into the rack 14. When the number of rack having a desired tool to be exchanged is designated by the side of a machining center 20, the belt mechanism 12 is driven to carry the designated rack to the detaching position where an exchanging robot 22 is arranged. The tool holder inserted into the designated rack is taken out by a robot arm 24A and moved to the position of a spindle 26 of the machining center 20. The tool attached to the spindle 26 is removed therefrom by the other robot arm 24B. Thereafter, the arm is rotated and the new tool is attached to the spindle 26.
However, in the case of exchanging the tools by use of such an automatic tool exchanging apparatus, a desired tool to be exchanged is selected by designating the rack number. Therefore, the rack numbers and the tool numbers must be set into the automatic tool exchanging apparatus in a one-to-one corresponding relation manner.
Thus, the tool number which is designated by the machining center means that, for example, when the tool No. 5 is designated, the rack No. 5 in the automatic tool exchanging apparatus is designated; therefore, it is impossible to directly designate the kind of tool with respect to whether the tool is the drill or cutter.
Therefore, in the case where the tool enclosed in the automatic tool exchanging apparatus is exchanged because of the damage or for the purpose of grinding, the new tool must be certainly attached to the rack of the predetermined number. Although the tools attached to the racks near the exchanging robot 22 can be relatively easily exchanged, the tools disposed at the positions of the other racks are exchanged in the state in which the operator enters the narrow place since a wide space cannot be assured. In particular, some of the working tools are considerably heavy, so that the tool exchanging work is severe.
On the other hand, to solve the problem of the tool exchange in the case where there is the one-to-one corresponding relation between the rack numbers and tool numbers, for example, as shown in FIG. 3, there is known the tool holder such that a plurality of magnets 29 indicative of the tool number are embedded in the attaching tapered surface 28 of the tool holder 18.
By use of the tool holder 18 having the tool number by the embedded magnets, after the tools attached to the holder were inserted at random into the racks 14 of the automatic tool exchanging apparatus 12 shown in FIG. 1, the tool numbers by the embedded magnets are previously read and stored by performing the learning process such that the exchanging operations of the tools from all of the racks 14 are executed once. In this manner, the relation between the rack numbers and the tool numbers is derived as the table data. Therefore, by designating the tool number on the basis of the table data, the tool of the rack number corresponding to the designated tool number can be selected and exchanged.
On the other hand, even in the case of exchanging the tool because of the damage or for the purpose of grinding, if the same tool holder is used, by attaching a new tool to the idle rack existing at the position where the exchanging operation can be easily performed without considering the rack number and by executing the learning process in a manner similar to the foregoing case, the tools can be exchanged without being restricted by the rack number.
However, in the case of the tool holder having the tool number by the embedded magnets as mentioned above, there is the limitation of the number of magnets which can be embedded into the holder. Therefore, an amount of information which can be provided for the holder is small and, therefore, the tools cannot be sufficiently managed on the basis of the holder information.
In addition, since the embedding positions of the magnets are substantially fixed, it is practically difficult to change the tool number and the like, so that the holder to be used is predetermined for every tool in a one-to-one corresponding relation manner. A special holder cannot be used to attach another different tool. Consequently, there are the problems such that it is necessary to stock the holder having the same embedded magnets to exchange the tools and it is complicated to manage the holders themselves.